


Beauty and the Dragon

by HippolytaGale



Category: RWBY
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Animal Death, Bullying, Derived Fiction, F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6252367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HippolytaGale/pseuds/HippolytaGale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake looked at the beast and thought hard. “Wait.” She said.</p><p>It turned, gleaming in the light. Its eyes bore into her, threatening to steal the words from her throat again—that violet gaze was so piercing, focused in on her like that. She took a shaky breath, then rose to her feet, a hand to her chest.</p><p>“Take me instead.”</p><p>A derived version of Beauty and the Beast, as per an anonymous request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! Some random person on 4chan requested a Beauty and the Beast fic with Bumblebee, so here I am to deliver. This is more of a derived version of the story--some of the events and characters are similar, others very different. I realized that I couldn't do the story better than Disney, so I might as well make it my own way, right? This was challenging to write, especially since I wanted to work against the usual patterns of my work, and I hope you enjoy!

The first new home Blake had was a gift of charity she would never forget.

“Dear god, child, what have they done to you?”

The chubby man with the bushy white mustache stepped over the ruffians whom, only moments before, had mugged her for her last coins. She was still small then, small enough to fear the fists of boys more than hunger, and too many times she had suffered through that routine; if her father were here, those children wouldn’t have dared. But he wasn’t here. He was long lost, and the old man here too different to trust freely; his stature was small, his puffy eyes narrow slits in his thick face. He reached for her, perhaps to check the scrapes on her cheek, perhaps for a more sinister purpose, as others had done before. Her father couldn’t protect her any longer, couldn’t for a long time now.

She pulled away, hardening her gaze like clay in a fire, burning and brittle with the anger she could muster. Her ears flattened against her skull. She withdrew into herself, crouched on the ground with her chest and knees pressed together, her arms wrapped tight around her shoulders like a shell. The man was not put off; he did not shrug and return to his journey, nor did he spit at the ground by her feet. He waited. After a time, he searched the ground and found a stick, digging idly in the earth in front of her as he spoke.

“I’m a teacher. Professor Port, at your service.” He paused until the silence felt too thick. “It so happens I have need of an assistant. Someone with nimble hands to help me work on my experiments. I’m afraid my pension won’t cover even a modest salary, but I could perhaps compensate with room and board?”

The man with the bushy mustache angled his sharp stick in the dirt, sketching out a few straight lines. It was a house. He tapped the stick into the earth.

“I won’t hurt you because you’re a Faunus,” He added, gently. “I would like to help you. If you join me and would like to leave later, you’re free to do that. What do you think?” He asked.

She stared at the childish drawing’s roof and door, winced against the clenching groan in her stomach, and agreed. She expected hands in the dark or cruelty in subtler ways, but they never came. When they arrived at the real house a few days later, her most immediate fears had been quieted a bit by Professor Port’s gentle nature; the unease didn’t completely go away, not for a year or two, but after that she felt safest at home with him. Day by day, it became clear that he was true to his word: he wouldn’t hurt her, Faunus or otherwise. She was not so sure about the townspeople in the nearby village, and she didn’t take chances.

Blake hid her ears like her intelligence: she became an afterthought by blending in. It wasn’t so hard—all the girls her age wore silk ribbons in their hair, and the men in the village prided themselves on wives that spoke little. Few children bothered her, but as she grew in age, she grew in beauty as well, and that drew unwanted attention.

“I want to kiss you.”

“Beg pardon?”

The boy was Cardin Winchester, the mayor’s son. He had backed her against the outside wall of the butcher shop, a towering, malevolent presence even though they were the same age; Blake had often seen him on the street, but they had never spoken before. He was cruel and arrogant, the last person she would ever wish to meet. She glared at him, but it didn’t deter the sneer curling his mouth. He set his hands on the wall, trapping her.

“You’re a pretty girl. I said I want to kiss you.” Her mouth dropped open. She had not yet reached her thirteenth birthday.

“Absolutely not,” She scoffed. 

He met her cheek with his hand—not grabbing it, just setting it there, heavy and threatening. Recoiling from his touch, she made her hand rigid like a spear and drove it up into the soft flesh of his armpit the same way her father had taught her when she was little; when Cardin gasped in pain, she shoved him away and ran, but he caught her wrist. He grabbed her by the hair, and when the ribbon came away in his grasp and revealed her delicate feline ears surprise faded into mean-spirited laughter.

“How about that?” He said. He let the ribbon drift to the ground, and she fled.

“She’s lovely to look at,” Cardin called to his friends day by day after that. Blake stiffened as he walked past her house each morning or afternoon, the gaggle of companions that followed him catcalling and hooting at her. 

“A shame that all that beauty had to be wasted on an animal.”

The Professor stuck his head out the front door.

“Cardin Winchester, that behavior is not becoming of a young gentleman!” Port’s mustache quivered, his index finger wagging in Cardin’s direction. “I will speak to your father about this!”

Port tried hard, but he couldn’t protect her from everything. Blake wasn’t Cardin’s only target either. Adam Taurus was only a few years older, long-limbed and bitter in the eyes. He didn’t really have a home. In the spring and summer he dozed under bushes and took baths in the town square’s fountain, and in the colder months he snuck into barns to sleep in the hay or washed bottles for the innkeeper in exchange for a spot on the floor. Blake often wondered why he bothered staying in the village. In a city he could at least be with other Faunus (other than herself and the bookshop’s owner Tukson, at least), and even though cities had their dangers it couldn’t be any worse than how the humans treated him here.

He was strange to her. They first spoke one morning before dawn; it was pure chance, really. Blake wasn’t ever one to talk to strangers. She had only wanted to take a walk after breakfast. As she neared the bridge, she saw him standing in the middle of the brook, spearing fish with a sharpened stick, bare above the waist and every one of the thick scars on his back gleaming an ugly gray-white in the sunshine. When she looked at those marks, stories unfurled through her mind to explain them, building in many directions at once: his parents were cruel—No—he was an escaped servant—No—he was caught for stealing apples—No—he took blows for his forbidden lover—

“If you’re going to ask, now’s the time.”

“Huh?” She started.

“No use staring unless you’ve got something to say.”

So she asked how he got the scars (A farm accident, how dull) and he asked why she wore the bow. There was no sense in hiding it; they could sense the similarity in each other. It drew them together like an iron pin to a lodestone. Blake took comfort in the shared burden of their Faunus features and the isolation that followed. They were a pair forged from loneliness and necessity, and Blake followed Adam despite his hard ways; it wasn’t always his actions that won him trouble. His horns made him more of a target. He didn’t hide them like Blake hid her ears—he wouldn’t.

“Why would you hide what makes you special?” He asked, touching the soft velvet fur the way fathers touch their daughters’ ringlets.

(Blake imagined him as a beggar prince, like the ones in her stories; dressed in rags but noble in nature.)

His horns stuck out through his auburn hair into two wicked points, thick and sharp and intimidating; the rest of his body never quite matched up to the threat of his Faunus heritage, his clothes hanging short and shallow over his lanky frame and narrow chest. And in one critical way, Adam was stupidly stubborn. If he thought he had a good reason, he would throw a punch to prove his point, and he would fight anyone—even Cardin Winchester. When the other boy and his friends would disrespect Blake as they often did, Adam defended her honor with disastrous consequences.

All the water in the world wouldn’t be enough to wash Adam clean of the poor results of his fisticuffs. Cardin outweighed him by about one hundred pounds and had just as long of a reach, and the friends that followed him everywhere were all too happy to step in if Cardin ever tired of pummeling the Faunus boy so often into the dirt at his feet. Blake tended to Adam many times after those fights; he spat blood into the dust and she bandaged the cuts on his face. One night she soothed his swollen eyes with frigid water from the square’s fountain.

“Ahh,” He groaned. Though Port still called her a child, at fourteen Blake liked the way Adam’s hands felt when they squeezed her waist.

A tiny piece of her (a dark part, a piece she didn’t like to see in herself often) enjoyed Adam best like this, with his gaze sealed shut and his fingers grazing across her hips. The anger and the rage he saved for Cardin, but for her, he saved all the soft parts of himself. With her, his touches were gentle and his words kind. He drew trouble away from her and welcomed it onto himself, and Blake would forgive Adam’s provocations of others for the dignity he sought for her and the pleasure of tending to him after a fight. It was a horribly tender feeling despite its dysfunction, and it only occurred to her later that perhaps Adam liked it that way as well. Trouble excited him. The older Blake became, and the darker his actions became, the more wrong that relationship seemed to her.

As they grew Adam caught up to Cardin in height, but he was still wiry, lacking the same kind of strength. So instead of fighting battles he wouldn’t win, he learned to hurt humans in other ways, and they weren’t his only victims. Adam returned from visits to the city with pamphlets filled to the brim with anti-human rhetoric; he worked himself up in conversation, the veins on his neck standing out and his face red. The words made his anger sharper. He was scary when he wanted revenge, all pointed teeth and endless rage and no concern for others caught in the violence. He was unstoppable. He was cruel.

That was why he was currently in Tukson’s bookshop tearing it apart, and Blake couldn’t do much to stop him. She could only hope to contain it, to talk him down from the worst possibilities of action. Blake was seventeen now, and she knew beggar princes were only real in her stories.

“Adam, stop.”

Blake pulled at his arm. He held Tukson’s pet finch in his fist, a puffball of brown and gold feathers; he squeezed the bird’s fragile form. Blake swore she could hear the bones in its neck being crushed like spun sugar and she made a noise somewhere low in the back of her throat. Adam snarled at her.

“We didn’t come here to play.” He said. The finch dropped lifeless from his hand, its wings flopping stupidly in the air until it fell to the floor. “We came to make a statement. Race traitors deserve it.”

The little bird hadn’t deserved to die like that, she thought. Tukson hadn’t meant any harm; he told the constable what Adam had done to Sky Lark’s dog, and she had been glad for that. The animal had died so horribly, its stomach a mess of lacerations from the broken springs Adam had hidden in a piece of meat, whining and crying as it bled to death. She had thought of telling the constable too, even if it would’ve gotten her only friend in the world arrested. She hated to think of what he would do with the sword he had brought back from the city on his last trip. The blade was forged in blood, or so Adam said; the weapon was long and lethal, the edge so keen it could slice a butterfly’s wing away clean when Adam wished it. He wanted a special occasion to use it, he said. He wanted to save it for a day when his message would change everything. Adam scared her now.

Blake bit her lip; she needed the pain, needed it to keep her eyes away from the tiny creature left forgotten at their feet. Adam picked a book up off of a nearby bookshelf. He opened the bright golden cover and flipped through it. She recognized it; it was the book of fables Tukson had ordered a while ago. He had gotten it especially for her to borrow. Maybe one day he would’ve let her keep it too; that’s what he had done with her favorite book of fairy tales, after all.

_“If you like it all that much, it’s yours.”_ He had said, eyeing how greedily she spied the cover.

 _“Oh, I couldn’t.”_

_“I insist,”_ He declared, and passed it to her. She spilled thank-yous to him like water overflowing a cup and finished it by the next day. The book in Adam’s hand was the next on her list. 

“What nonsense,” Adam grunted, and ripped the pages out. He tore the book in half along its open spine, and Blake’s jaw clenched as she saw the gold-leaf pages fly about. He threw the shelf over with a terrific crash.

“Am I going to do this all by myself?” He asked, spitting onto the books covering the floor.

“Adam, please, that’s enough. This is excessive.” He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t shred any more books at least. Instead, he turned his attention to breaking windows and tipping over cases.

He did do it all by himself in the end. Blake didn’t stop him, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch the shop either; she stood in the shadow next to the window, the moonlight shrouding her in its negative space, and watched him ruin the bookshop that was her haven during the day. She choked back an angry sob, but no tears accompanied it: it was a scream she dared not express in front of him, a howl at the sheer stupidity of it all, at the pettiness and ugliness of it. More than anything she wanted to scream at the anxiety rooting her in place.

When dawn came, she couldn’t bear to visit Tukson after knowing what had happened. Adam filled her in that afternoon, his arm cold around her shoulder as they sat on her front porch, his smirk ugly and hard. Tukson had been devastated.

“I wish you would’ve been there, Blake.” He said. “When he saw me across the street, he understood. He couldn’t prove it, but he knew.”

Her jaw clenched. Adam leaned his head against the side of her own, their hair brushing together, and she trembled, but not from desire. She should’ve stopped him. She should’ve stopped him at Tukson’s, and the other places they had been. How many times was she going to think that before she stopped thinking and _did_ something?

“This is the first step.” Adam said. “This is the moment the entire town knows that even if we’re outnumbered, we can still bite back—if humans want to test me, they’ll find themselves fighting a fire they’ll never be able to put out.” He thumped his thigh with a fist. She gritted her teeth.

“Do you really think most of the villagers want to fight you, Adam? They’re just trying to live. They’re not all bad people.”

“If they don’t stop injustice, they’re just as culpable as the people who hate us.” He said.

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“You have to stop being so delicate, Blake. Though,” He murmured behind the shell of her ear. His other hand drifted over her breast, clasping it through the thin material of her shirt. “I do like how soft you can be sometimes.”

Adam touched her like that more often now, and she didn’t know what she wanted, but it wasn’t this. She reached up and cranked his fingers away, anxious and upset, shoving him aside. They stared at each other for a moment, both shocked. 

“After everything I’ve done for you. Why must you hurt me, Blake?” He said. 

Then, without any trace of anger lighting up his features, he brought the back of his hand across her face in a sharp crack. Sharp heat and pain flushed to her face. She stood, tears stinging her eyes.

“You need to go.” She said.

They hadn’t spoken for two days now. Blake caught glimpses of him in the town, but the boy she had known didn’t exist any longer. He was in the past, like most other good things in her life. Port had been furious when he saw the black bruise high on her cheekbone. He had even asked the constable in town to arrest Adam for assault, but the officer shrugged.

“Faunus turn on each other all the time.” The officer said. “They’re animals.”

They felt helpless, but at least Adam stayed away. Blake hoped the upcoming time alone would do her good—solitude was a comfort during situations like these, and the professor treasured his annual science conference, so his excitement was an endearing balm for her anxiety. Port assured her he would only be gone for a few days. They sat over tea in the sunroom, talking about the panels he would attend and the academic disputes he would inevitably jump into; last year he had added an extra day to his schedule strictly for the sake of arguing.

“Once I present my paper, it’ll be more a matter of beating off my admirers!” He joked, twirling the end of his broad white moustache. 

She saw him off with a wave and a smile the next day. She drew at the kitchen table the morning after he left, unaccustomed to a house without the sound of Port talking himself through a theory or the boom of his ancient musket in the back yard; when she cooked, the meals looked too small, missing the color of the radishes he chopped over everything and the golden wine he had with his dinner. _Only for a few days,_ she thought. That was nothing compared to when she was a child. She tended to the chickens in the coop and spent hours splayed out on a blanket in the field behind their house, dozing with a book open across her stomach. Snow fell one night, blanketing and muffling every sound but the scratch of her pen on paper. The quiet was good for those few days.

When the professor’s horse Phillipe came back on the morning of the fifth day without him, Blake went looking. She took her cloak and her satchel with his medicines tucked into the pockets, and rode through the forest until, later that night, she found and tracked the remains of footprints in the snow. Few people were on the road this time of year, and though the tracks were several days old they led to a path deeper into the wood. Blake had to hurry; flurries were falling again, and if she didn’t follow the tracks now she would lose them. After following the prints for some time, the horse stopped. The animal trembled under her legs, quaking with fear. She stroked her fingers through his mane.

“Is this it?” She asked. 

The buildings were far from the road. _What caused the Professor to end up here,_ she wondered. Down a long stretch of black cobblestones there rose a ridge of spiked towers, all different sizes. Black granite arches ringed the cluster of buildings. One tower, far more massive than the rest, stabbed against purple clouds like a knife to a bruise; an eyesore of multicolored lights beamed through the windows, but what they illuminated Blake couldn’t tell. Green lightning flashed, startling Phillipe into a series of nervous steps. Blake tightened her grip on the reins.

“Whoa, Phillipe. Steady.”

She swung her legs over his back and slid off the saddle, her boots slipping on the wet pavers. She scratched Phillipe’s ears and led him down the street. When lightning stabbed the sky or thunder-snow whipped into his face he snorted, but kept calm under her hand. Eventually they came upon a massive statue: a pair of humans stood over various monstrous beasts, weapons pointed to the sky in exaltation. The creatures were unlike anything Blake had ever seen before. Wolves were not so lanky, and boars lacked such large tusks. They unsettled her the way old ghost stories would sometimes make her reach for a candle when she woke up at night—there wasn’t a clear reason, the feeling simply sat tight against her ribs.

The entrance to the (What should she call it? Castle? Fortress?) structure was a set of giant oaken doors rimmed with black steel. She pushed them open without a thought. If this place was dangerous, then there was no reason to advertise her presence here. Before entering, she stroked Phillipe’s muzzle and swept the ragged ends of his mane out of his eyes; though he was an animal, she sensed his worry.

“Wait here.” She said. “Don’t be afraid.”

It was dim inside, only a few flashes of lightning the only illumination; as she walked, her boots would catch on overturned chairs or crunch over broken glass. Every so often the fine ghosting of cobwebs over her arms made her hair stand on end. Whatever happened here happened a long time ago.

She wandered for what seemed like hours, and with no clues to guide her. After wandering through a few halls she figured out that the building was a school campus; large lecture halls were filled with beautiful empty seats, and the signs buried under a thick layer of dust offered directions to cafeterias and auditoriums. It was strange to her; if there was a school this close, surely she would’ve known about it. Then again the town where she lived was remote, and travelers who left the main road seldom returned.

At some point she spotted a glow in the darkness down the hall. As she reached it, she saw it was a lone candle sputtering away in an alcove at the base of a stairwell. A candle meant people—and after she picked it up, she saw the door ajar at the top of the stairs, and the soft sniffling sounds she would’ve missed were it not for the benefits of her Faunus heritage. She climbed the stairs one step at a time, listening for any other noise. Once she gingerly pushed open the door, she was drawn at once to the sound of Port wheezing inside what appeared to be a cell. 

“Professor?” She whispered, kneeling by the barred opening at the base of the door. 

“Blake?”

“Professor.” She took his cold hand through the bars. He pressed his face close to the steel, his eyes wide with shock.

“What are you doing here?” He said.

“You’ve been missing for days. What happened to you?”

“No time to explain, you have to go!”

“Who’s done this to you?”

“Go, run!”

“I’m not leaving!”

Suddenly a hand pulled at her shoulder, and the candle flew from her grasp. It rolled into a puddle of condensation pooled on the ground and she was in darkness save for the glow of clouded moonbeams projecting through a skylight. She lashed out with a fist and caught something dry, hot, and raspy as her knuckles skidded across its surface; a hand, scaled and not at all human, shoved her against the wall. Something stood at the perimeter of the light, but despite the darkness Blake could make out its form, and the horror and awe stopped up her throat.

The creature was radiant and metallic. Its massive body was lithe and supple, corded muscle rolling under bronze and copper scales that gleamed in every stray mote of light. Between its curved horns sprouted a vibrant mane the color of polished brass that stuck out every which way and fell a good three feet down its shoulders. Blake was alarmed at the warm golden glow in the center of its chest; it pulsed, never fading or flickering. Blake realized that it must be the animal’s heart, or perhaps an ember that allowed it to breathe flame. Not that it needed an extra weapon, of course: ivory canines jutted from its mouth in an underbite—the teeth looked as sharp as the curved, knifelike claws at the end of each of the beast’s fingers.  
“Oh no,” She whispered. Fear was a keen, thin string pulling high in her chest; she swallowed to keep it down. The creature’s ribs swelled, its glowing heart pulsing.

“Who are you?” It rumbled. It was a higher-pitched voice than Blake had anticipated, but resonant all the same. The creature watched her from its spot just beyond the light, intent on her movements. 

“Why are you trespassing here?” It asked. 

It took a step forward, dwarfing her in size. She swallowed, her mouth dry, her back pressed to the cell door. Her knees collapsed and she slid down to the floor. Port groaned against the bars.

“I-I’ve come for my father.” Blake stuttered. 

The creature descended to all fours, its claws clicking against the stones, crawling over her scraped knees until its lavender gaze was level with her own and its massive hands (if they could truly be called that) fenced in her face on either side. Its chest rose and fell; breath like salt water over hot coals swept against Blake’s skin. She gritted her teeth and turned her head; its nostrils flared, sniffing, dipping to the spot where her jaw fitted under the lobe of her ear. Its scales touched hot against her flesh.

“No,” It snorted against her skin. “You don’t smell right.” Its nose traveled along her hairline; one talon speared through the ribbon in her tresses, slowly drawing it free. The fabric fluttered to the floor, and the creature pulled its head back to look at the feline ears underneath. The beast blinked.

“You’re a Faunus?” It asked. 

“Yes.” She gasped. Why wouldn’t her damn voice work? “And this is my father.”

“Adopted?” It asked. The creature’s head cocked to the side, curious. It rose slowly on its hind legs. “Hmmm.”

Blake willed ice water into her veins. She had to be strong now. “Please, whatever he’s done—let him go.”

“He shouldn’t have trespassed here. It’s dangerous—his own fault.” It said. 

“Then why are you keeping him prisoner?”

“He’s—” It paused. “He’s going to help me.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a curse here, one that needs breaking, and good help is hard to find.” It huffed, a little jet of flame exiting from its mouth, glancing out the window of the tower. “There’s nothing else that I can do by myself. I’m running out of options.” It was quite a human thing to say, almost mundane. It gave Blake hope: perhaps it would listen to reason. 

“Why don’t we make a deal? There must be some kind of—” It shook its shaggy head.

“I can’t let him go. I need him. Magic like this fades your memories, curls them up like pictures left out in the sun.” It grunted, rumbling and low. “I wasn’t the brightest when I was human, and I can’t even read anymore; the letters, they get so…squiggly. I can’t remember what they mean. If the curse isn’t lifted soon…” Its voice trailed away. It shook its head. “I’m sorry, but I need him.”

Blake looked at the beast and thought hard. “Wait.” She said. 

It turned, gleaming in the light. Its eyes bore into her, threatening to steal the words from her throat again—that violet gaze was so piercing, focused in on her like that. She took a shaky breath, then rose to her feet, a hand to her chest.

“Take me instead.”

“You?” It raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Yes. I can read to you, if that’s what you need. And I’m younger—stronger. I’m used to danger.”

“You.” It repeated, as if it had difficulty understanding. “You would…take his place?”

“Yes. Whatever curse is here, I can help you find a way to break the spell.”

The beast thought for a moment.

“One condition,” It said. “If I’m going to release him, you have to promise to stay here until the work is done.” 

_A promise?_ Blake thought. Like the ones she and Adam had made and broken to each other dozens of times? A glimmer of a smile tugged at her lips; all she had to do was ensure the professor’s safe departure, and then she would sneak away later. She just needed to let him know not to worry—with his weak heart, their separation would strain him. If she could just pass on her plan—

“I will.”  
The monster clapped its hands together.

“Done!” It roared.

Port moaned and reached through the bars. His white hand fluttered in the air and grasped at her shoulder.

“Blake, listen to me,” He said. “I’m old, I’ve lived my life—”

“No time to talk, pal. There’s work to be done.” The creature said. 

It slapped Port’s hand away and tore the lock clean from the door with its claws, leaving a ragged maw of splinters and broken points in its place. It swung the door open and lifted Port out with both hands, then tucked him under one arm like a package before striding into the hallway. 

Blake leapt to her feet, but the beast was quicker; it galloped down the stairs and into the main corridor as she lagged behind. In the hallway already its dark shape was racing through the shadows and through the doors at the end of the hall—she pursued it down the steps of the grand staircase and the huge foyer, her breath a hot stitch in her side.

“Wait!” She cried. What in the world was it doing?! It would give the Professor a heart attack, galloping and tossing him around like that!

The wind burst cold from outside, a sliver of light arcing through the clouds across the tile from the main courtyard. When Blake slammed open the door all the way, it was just in time to see an old steel zeppelin no larger than a carriage take off, a glance of Port’s hair visible through the window the only sign of his presence. She didn’t think any of the machines like that existed anymore; they had fallen out of use as the wilds became dangerous. The automated machine soared into the air, and the Professor was gone.

She ran after the dirigible, one hand reaching as if she could pull it from the sky, as stupid as that was. The dragon (what else should she call it?) stared at the departing blimp, its breath fogging in the cold. Then, swift as any wild thing, it turned and they collided into each other. Blake skidded on her heels in the snow but regained her balance—the creature did the same, its talons shredding through the powder in wet slits (as if it melted at its touch), and the glow of its chest the only hot spot for miles. Its warm hands clenched around her ribs on reflex. It lifted Blake into the air like a lost kitten.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, okay?”

Blake acted before she thought. The ball of her foot extended, the toes arched away perfectly, and she kicked her new warden squarely in the stomach. Its lavender eyes bulged a little as a cloud of breath coughed through its teeth in surprise; Blake swung her other foot, hitting another hard strike to its torso.

“Ow!” It cried. It winced, confused and shocked. 

“You-you _bastard, ___” Blake said behind clenched teeth.

She kicked out wildly, hitting wherever she could with each leg, slapping at its head with her hands. Muscle stiffened defensively under her blows, the expression on the beast’s face hysterical if Blake weren’t so angry. 

“Cut it out!” It said, its breath hot smoke in her face. Blake squirmed, but its hold on her torso was fast. 

“You didn’t even let me say goodbye!” She said. “Who knows if I’ll see him again, and he’s got a weak heart, and you didn’t even let me say goodbye!” 

“Hitting me doesn’t fix that! Stop it!” 

She slapped it hard across the jaw. Suddenly its eyes went crimson and it roared into her face, its teeth a fatal frame nearly pricking a sharp circle around her cheek, halting just short of breaking the skin. She went very still; the beast yanked Blake in close to its chest, then curled an arm under her knees and swung her like a bride being carried over the threshold. One clawed hand clamped her knees to its side, and her arms were pinioned between its grip and the rigid line of its shoulder. It snarled into her hair, the rumble in its chest chilling her all the way to her core. 

“Stop. Please.” It growled. “You’re angry, and I get it, but I don’t want to hurt you, and if you keep doing that that’s exactly what will happen. Please. Stop hitting me and let me calm down.” 

It kept its iron grip on her body, its breathing harsh for some time. The break allowed Blake’s fear to drift away and her own anger to cool; eventually it relaxed its grip into a gentle squeeze. Blake pried herself loose. 

They glared at each other. In the back of her mind somewhere Blake figured this thing could probably break her neck in a flick of its wrist, but that didn’t really register. If it wanted to kill her, it would’ve done so when she had hit it. The creature’s eyes were back to the same pretty lavender from before; it crouched, setting itself beneath her. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” It said. 

The apology took her aback. She did not expect the beast to care about her feelings. Whomever it used to be, she could tell it wasn’t evil despite its fearsome appearance; even so, it angered her. Its size and terrible beauty would not dull the sheen of her annoyance. 

“There’s nothing to be done about it now,” She snapped. “If you’re going to put me to work, then hurry up and do it.” 

It growled to itself, mumbling apologies, and led her back into the main building. She was angry, but she couldn’t stay angry at it for very long, not with the way it looked as it apologized. Sullenness settled around Blake like a blanket. As soon as it fell asleep, she thought, she would run away. None of this was her business. 

It opened the door, and they entered into an antique laboratory of some kind. Glass beakers coated in dust lined open shelves. Open books were flopped over tables, chairs, and stacked on the floor. The creature picked up a pile from a tufted chair and cleared a space for her to sit, then perched on its haunches atop one of the desks. 

“Here’s where the magic happens,” It said. “Or, uh, lack thereof.” 

Blake picked up a sheaf of papers from a table. There were words on every piece of paper, notes of some kind in a heavy handwriting. 

“I’ve been trying to figure out what to do for…a long time. I’m almost out of books—there are loads more in the library—” 

“You have a library?” She asked, her interest piqued. 

“I’ll show you later, if you want.” It shrugged. “Beacon’s your home for now, so explore anywhere you like, except the West Wing.” 

“What’s in the West Wing?” 

“...Curious, huh? Guess that makes sense.” 

It leapt off the desk with a terrific crash of stray books and papers, landing right in front of her. It extended a hand. 

If I show you, that’ll be enough to satisfy you?” It said, a note of cautiousness in its tone. They held gazes for a moment, until Blake nodded, laying her fingers in its palm. 

In a flash, the beast picked Blake up and swung her around in a piggyback position on its back. Blake’s hands clenched onto the vibrant golden mane and the creature’s shoulder by instinct alone, too shocked to let a word come out of her mouth. 

“Hang on! The shortcut’s kind of wild!” It hollered. 

And off they went, lumbering through the halls once again, Blake gasping with each sharp turn, silent against the clatter of the beast’s claws on stone. 

The “shortcut” was climbing the massive circular walls inside the central tower. The stairs (or what Blake could see of them through the blur of motion) were long and winding, and the beast cleared floor after floor with relative speed and ease by climbing in a straight line. Its talons found purchase in the mortar, its muscles rippling under the tight clasp of Blake’s legs around its sides. Blake spared herself the glance down; she didn’t have to look to know it was a long drop. A very, very long drop. She buried her face in the creature’s hair and gritted her teeth until they reached their destination; when the beast hauled them over the stone baluster, its scales shimmering in a dull sheen of sweat, it crouched to the floor and waited for Blake to disembark. She almost couldn’t. She couldn’t tell if it was exhilaration or rage at its stupidity that kept her frozen in place. 

“Don’t ever do that again.” She finally growled, and rolled off its back. It laughed, a light and rich sound. 

The beast led the way until they reached another set of tall wooden doors, the face of a gargoyle engraved onto the thick bronze handles. It opened them with a creak, and in the interior room filled with neglected, rotted furnishings and the smell of stale air, Blake saw a strange thing. 

“Go on,” the beast said gently. “Take a look.” 

At the far end of the room, framed by a large arched window, a single rose hung suspended inside a bell jar. It was unlike anything Blake had ever seen; the difference was not in the shape, the scarlet petals perfectly shaped into tight layers unfolding into a large bloom, but in the unusual soft glow it emitted. It made her think of a match buried somewhere deep within the blossom, seeping through every capillary of the flower’s petals in some way. She rested her hands on the cool sides of the bell jar. The beast stood on the other side. Blake noticed the glow of its heart seemed to pair with the glimmer of the rose; not the same, but of that kind. The same quality of luminescence perhaps, if a different color. 

“What is it?” Blake asked. 

“My sister, Ruby.” It said after a moment. “I…I think she changed when I did.” 

It seemed so sad, then. It touched a claw to the top of the jar the same way Adam would touch her hair when they were younger, only no darkness to it. Just then, a puffball of white, hazy light descended from the dark crevices of the rafters above; it shimmered like a falling star, landing on the beast’s shoulder. The creature glanced over to it, and a quiet noise not unlike the wind chimes Port hung on their porch at home sounded from it. The beast smiled, sharp teeth not so threatening now. 

“This is Weiss,” It said. “Ruby’s lover. She watches over her when I can’t.” 

The glowing light hovered away from the beast and circled around Blake, as if examining her, a trail of stardust wreathing around her body. Blake cupped her hands, curious. Slowly, after a moment of hesitation, the star ( _Weiss, ___Blake thought) dipped into the bowl of her fingers. It chimed again, its music sweet to her ears. The beast grinned now, pleased.

“She likes you.” It said. “You should be honored. She has high standards.” 

Weiss sounded a bong (a sound of annoyance if Blake ever heard one) and zipped in a flurry around the beast’s head before retreating to the ceiling once more. Blake stared at the dragon’s face as it followed Weiss’s path. Its features were majestic and terrifying, and yet…why couldn’t she place the feeling she had looking at it? It was a kind of wonder, but more than that. It was a tug to a deeper part of herself, a part she seldom felt. 

“Who did this to you?” Blake asked. 

“Who did that to your face?” It countered. Blake’s hand flew to her bruised cheek. 

“No one. It’s…it’s nothing.” It looked at her, concerned, but quiet. The creature hesitated, thinking, and let the matter drop. 

“For me, I don’t remember much of it anymore. There was a woman—a visitor from another land, tall, and…dangerous. You could tell. I don’t know why she cast the curse, or why I’m the only one that hasn’t been turned into a gear or a trinket or a ball of light in the main tower—” _So that’s what that was,_ Blake thought. “Or why my sister is like this now. But I know that she’s dying, and I know that you’re the first person who’s offered to help, deal or no. When others see me, they run. They’ll never see me as anything other than a monster, so I’ve been trying to make do on my own.” 

Blake thought about the children that threw rocks at her when she was child, before she found a home in the village. _Cat ears!_ They had cried. _Your father was a demon and your mother the Devil’s whore!_ The dragon was far more fearsome than she or any Faunus could ever be. She wondered who had hurt it, who had thrown stones or ugly words. 

Just then, a petal dropped from the flower, falling more slowly that it should. As it fell, the light faded from it, and it joined a small litter of other cast-off pieces at the bottom of the jar. Weiss pined a lonely, soft note from above. The beast’s chest rose in a heavy sigh. 

“We don’t have much time left.” 

Blake’s heart softened; she wondered if it had to do with the creature’s fearsome appearance tempered by grief, and the subtle tremor in its rich voice. She thought of Port twelve years ago, with his drawings in the dirt, offering a home to a Faunus child he did not know. She looked at the beast’s downcast eyes and she saw a piece of herself there, a helplessness she knew too well as a child. 

Both of her hands lifted from the glass to squeeze around the beast’s massive palm, and in that moment she decided to help.


	2. Chapter 2

Yang. The dragon’s name was Yang. It told her its name in that moment standing over the bell jar, the ball of light that had once been a girl named Weiss glimmering down at them. The moment Blake touched its scaled hand with her own, heat flushed through her once again; the beast was a furnace, its fiery warmth strange for such a reptilian creature. It frowned at her touch, twisting its hand to clasp her fingers.

“Your hands are like ice.”

It demanded to get her to a warm place. She did not anticipate how accustomed she would become to its own warmth over the next few weeks.

After descending to the lower levels of the school, Yang carried her to what must’ve been a dormitory common room at one time. An enormous fireplace sat cold at the end of the room, and after Yang set her down it broke apart old chairs and furniture to throw into the hearth, setting the pile alight with one spout of flame from its mouth. A fire burst into being at once, a flash of heat thawing Blake’s cheeks. With the running and the riding, she hadn’t noticed how frozen her fingers and toes felt until the contrast of warmth was offered again. Yang searched the other rooms, returning with ragged blankets and lumpy cotton pillows of all sizes. It flung them a few feet away from the fireplace, busying itself with creating some semblance of a comfortable sleeping spot. 

“I’m sorry there aren’t any mattresses,” It said. “They’re all too rotten to sleep on.” 

“It’s okay, I’ve had worse.”

That made it look up to her with what looked like concern. It traveled to other rooms again, returning with more blankets and wood for the fire. By the time it was done, there was a small mountain of soft surfaces for Blake to sleep on, and the fire blazed brightly. It cloaked her in a swath of cloth as she hung close to the heat of the flame, warming up her extremities.

“Are you hungry?” It asked, crouching low to be on her level. The closeness felt oddly protective. She nodded.

“I’ll see what I can find.” It said. “Stay inside. If you see lights, don’t worry, those are my friends. If you see shadows, though…” Its face darkened. “Don’t go outside. Stay away from the windows outside this room. If you see a shadow, call for me.”

“Why? What’s—”

“There are monsters that live in the woods around the school. Grimm. Normally they stay away, but a few of them sneak around every so often. Before the curse I was trained to kill them, to protect people. You’ll be fine, don’t worry; stay inside the school’s walls, near the flames. They’ll keep you safe.”

“Who’ll keep you safe?” Blake asked. She didn’t know why the answer to that question seemed more important than she could’ve guessed only an hour ago. The beast gave her a small smile. It pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“Don’t worry about me.” It said. “It takes more than a few Grimm to take me down. Just stay close to the fire. And stay quiet.”

And then it was gone, a flurry of talons and gleaming scales vanishing into the darkness. Blake clung to the blanket, wondering about the unease she had felt looking at the statues in the courtyard and the occasional noise outside the windows down the hall. When Yang returned sometime later, an ancient cast iron pot with a wooden bowl and spoon clinking around in its bottom in one hand and a sack of wild, just-washed vegetables in the other, Blake was relieved. It fetched water from a well in the courtyard and combined the ingredients into a soup that soon warmed her stomach. It was delicious; she scraped out every drop she could with the spoon, and brought the edge of the bowl to her lips to finish off what remained. Like the cold, she hadn’t noticed her hunger until it gnawed deep in her stomach. Yang sat apart from her, watching.

“Won’t you have any?” Blake asked. It shook its head.

“I don’t need to eat. I don’t sleep often either, only a bit every few days, so you can rest easy.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

After pulling off her boots, Blake nestled herself into the nest of blankets and pillows Yang had built near the fire. The snow still muffled noise outside, but the wind began to pick up, rattling the old window panes just outside the room, so Yang closed the door, dropping the latch tight to lock it in place. The fire still burned hot, but its light had dimmed somewhat, now a low flame kept alive by Yang adding the occasional chair leg. Blake pulled a blanket up to her chin, fascinated by the way the firelight warmed Yang’s scales until they looked like molten copper.

“I’m happy that you’re going to help, Blake. I know you didn’t plan on it, but I’m happy you’re here.”

They made plans as Blake drifted off to sleep; she mumbled about card catalogs and cross-referencing as Yang nodded, cool lavender eyes fixed on glowing embers, tending each log until it crumbled into black char. True to its word, when Blake awoke in the morning it stood guard over the doorway, a sentinel as she slept. It brought her a bucket of cold water to wash with and took her to the library to begin their work.

Blake had never seen so many books in her entire life. Tukson’s shop was a paradise to her, and it had nowhere near the thousands of copies that graced the shelves and crannies here. The old card catalogue was an entire wall’s length; Yang climbed to the highest tomes so Blake wouldn’t have to use the suspect ladder leaning in the corner, carrying books as thick as the width of her hand, stacking them across tables in rapidly-growing piles.

Each volume was a bigger collection of words than Blake was used to seeing in an entire year of her own reading, but she quickly learned which would be useful and which would not. History and Philosophy returned to the shelves, her fast eyes seeing no hints of how to dismantle a curse of this kind. Even calling it a curse may be too much; Professor Port always told her that what people call magic was in fact not mystical at all, merely a science not yet understood. He was always writing about this theoretical science—Dust Science—and at this time Blake wished she had paid closer attention. Still, at least she could winnow out books that were no use; the rest she would have to spend more time with, dissecting them for meaning.

Lunch came and went. Yang was considerate, bringing her a pair of apples and an ear of roasted corn, and a jug of well-water to wash it down. Now that the sky was no longer stormy, Blake could see the large sprawl of a weedy garden stretching across one corner of the courtyard under a fresh blanket of snow. It must’ve gone to seed long ago, the rows overgrown and uneven, but the last of the autumn’s crops still clung to their stalks, waiting to be plucked. To the side, fruit trees (apple and pear still full, plum and cherry bare for the winter) created a twiggy canopy. After Yang delivered her meal, it revealed a woven basket in its other hand.

“I’ll be outside if you need me; now that you’re here, it actually matters if there’s food in the house, know what I mean? And I’ll hunt in the woods this afternoon.” It said. “You need a good meal.”

As Blake continued her work through the day and into evening, Yang was true to its word. The rabbit was small and greasy, but enough to settle the growling in her stomach as the last rays of daylight dimmed. A pair of lights, one pink and one green (Yang called them Nora and Ren) bobbed into the room, lighting the way back to the dormitory she had slept in the night before, and again Yang started a fire in the massive hearth. The tinkling chimes of the glowing orbs had the rhythm of a conversation, but only Yang could follow, its head bobbing yes or no to the sound of the lights or its face cracking into a smile at some moments. As Blake’s eyes fluttered, the lights disappeared beyond the heavy door, and once again Yang sat beside her, feeding the fire as she drifted away. The day had gone so quickly, and so little new information had been gained. She would try harder tomorrow, for Yang’s sake.

The next morning was the same as the first; a washbasin, breakfast, reading in the library until her eyes itched with strain. Yang had wrapped an enormous blue cloak around its shoulders.

“I feel weird knowing that you’re here, and I’m essentially not wearing clothes. Trust me, no one should have to look at that.” It said. (Blake mouth’s quirked with amusement. She didn’t mind, not really, though she missed the shimmer of light across each scale.)

It also found her a few garments to change into if she desired; a shirt and a coat slightly moth-eaten, but otherwise serviceable, a few extra pairs of trousers, and a good hat. She appreciated the effort. Yang was kind, and that motivated Blake even more to find what information she could to free it of the curse it suffered. The work was long and tedious, but she kept reading. While Yang butchered a deer in the courtyard while she took a break, and Blake asked about the new wound slashed bright across its scaled forearm; it looked suspiciously like claw marks, or perhaps fangs if the teeth were very long. Yang shrugged it off.

“Just a few critters needing put down out in the forest this morning. Don’t worry, kitten.”

If Adam had called her kitten, Blake would’ve punched him in the arm for patronizing her. If Cardin had called her that, she would’ve walked away, face hot with anger. When Yang said it, somehow she didn’t mind; of the two of them, Yang was closer to an animal than she would ever be, and Yang spoke it with such kindness in its voice, the phrase ended up as endearing rather than insulting. Still, the wound on its arm crusted over with blood, a reminder of the danger lurking at the edges of Beacon.

Blake made sure she tended to Yang’s injury. It was the least she could do to repay it for its protection, and it was an easy task—pure water, a poultice of wild Echinacea, and a clean bandage was all she needed. As she finished tying off the dressing wrapped tight around Yang’s forearm, the dragon stopped to take her chin between its forefinger and thumb.

“Looks like that bruise is finally fading away.” It said. Blake’s gaze fell to the side. It released her from its grasp, setting a clawed hand softly on her shoulder. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” It asked.

She didn’t intend to tell it much, but she ended up spilling the whole story. Blake didn’t understand how Yang could pull the truth out of her so easily, but the words escaped like air from a drowning man. When she finished recalling the events, Yang’s eyes had that red quality she had seen the night she had slapped it, but it wasn’t quite seething like it was before. Its rage was controlled, its anger locked in tight.

“Men like that are a waste of skin.” It grunted. “I’m sorry that happened to you, and I’ll make sure it’ll never happen again. You’re under my protection, from now until you want otherwise.”

Blake found that comforting.

Days stretched into a week. She found snippets of information that could be helpful; the Dust the professor always spoke of seemed to be extracted from certain types of quarries, and with enough of it almost anything was possible. She shared the news with Yang, and a visible relief swept through the beast’s frame, like a weight lifting from its shoulders. 

“I haven’t made any progress in months, and here you are starting to figure it out in a few days.” It clasped both of her hands. “Thank you.”

The second day of the third week was a good day—not because of the research, that was still lacking further results—but because of the fight the two of them had that afternoon.

“Yang, take a break.” The dragon puffed just before entering the door to the hall, great clouds of steam rising from its mouth as it carried old logs from the woods to break apart for firewood that evening. It dropped its burden on the stairs with a clatter, a glimmer of sweat clinging to its brow.

“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” It asked. “You been reading nonstop for three days.”

“Yes, but that’s mental work. You’ve been hunting and cleaning and looking after me, and that’s nothing to scoff at.”

“I think you underestimate how easy it is to take care of you.” It said. 

“Do I?”

“Yeah.” It nodded. “I like having something to accomplish, and it’s easy to work hard when you’ve got a pretty girl waiting for you.” It winked at her, and Blake thought it strange how suddenly a squirm of pleasure bolted through her chest. She didn’t know what to say to that.

“Are you blushing?” It asked, teasing. “Aww, Blake, that’s so cute!”

She drove a fist into the snow at her feet, crafting a snowball with expert precision and speed. Before Yang could stop grinning, she lobbed it hard against its snout, the crystals exploding into a puff of diamond dust across its fangs and mane. Yang sputtered, and then a high peal of laughter rippled from its stomach, its own hands scrambling for snow. They lobbed missiles at each other from across the yard, both of them seeking an advantage over the over. At one point, it scraped together a snowball the size of a boulder, lifting it over its head—and promptly dropping it after Blake deftly struck a snowball across its eyes. The huge snowball cracked on its horns for a moment before it split into two wet halves, hitting the ground into two equally-sopping piles. Yang fell onto its bottom, bewildered and frosted over with ice crystals. Blake laughed then, in a light and musical way she couldn’t remember, not since she was a little girl, not since her parents passed away. 

“You had it coming!” She said. 

Giving up, Yang collapsed backwards, spreading out its arms and legs, wiggling them to make a snow angel on the ground. After a moment, Blake rolled her eyes and offered the beast a hand.

“Would you like some help up?” She asked.

Blake had a flash of hope that Yang would pull her down to the ground. There was an image in her head that came unbidden, but not unwelcome: she imagined the blue woolen cloak pooled underneath their prone bodies, her palms flat across the glowing pulse of Yang’s heart, the creature’s warm hands around her shoulder blades, and its chuckle against her hair. The image came and went, and though Blake was embarrassed and a little confused by it, she wasn’t ashamed either. Yang took her hand, and lifted itself to its feet, bits of snow falling from its cloak.

“You’re vicious, you know that?” It said, and smiled before it went back to work. 

She shrugged off the vision; it was like that with Adam too, merely idle thoughts of a girl unused to physical affection, and Yang was enjoyable company, even if it wasn’t human at the moment.

Yang enjoyed her company as well. It especially enjoyed when Blake would read to it at night, especially on the rare evenings when it needed to sleep. It rested curled into a ball in one corner of the room, a ragged blanket the only buffer between itself and the cold stone floor, and it fell asleep within the few pages Blake read each night. It always happened that way, as if her voice was a swift drug to Yang’s senses; it seemed quite relaxing to the beast. As she watched the dragon doze, Blake wondered what Yang looked like before the curse. If it had been a man, she would have no doubt he would have been the most striking man she had ever seen, probably handsome enough to set her heart fluttering with a glance or a wink. If it had been a woman, well…she would probably be even more beautiful.

Blake had a strange thought again, old memories of her favorite fairy tales and True Love’s Kiss, when a low thud sounded outside accompanied by the sound of crashing glass, far down the corridor away from their safe haven in the common room. They both started, Yang’s eyes darting to the barred door. She bolted to her feet—as Yang threw the door open, Blake’s keen ears picked up a frightening noise: the warning of chimes from Yang’s friends wailing in a panic, as if they tried to shout _Look out!_ before the shadows would storm through the ruins and find them. 

“Stay here!” Yang said.

It went down on all fours, rushing out through the doors and down the hallway in a flash. Blake stood frozen at the threshold, waiting, her blood pounding in her ears and her limbs shivering with adrenaline. She should run. Or she should slam the door and lock it and hope she would be safe. She should trust Yang to handle the situation.

When she heard its pained howl, she couldn’t stay away. Her feet had ideas of their own, and she ran after the noise even as every self-preserving cell in her body screamed for her to flee the other way. What would she do against the shadows? How could she fight them if Yang could not? She heard these things—knew these things—but her heart flew ahead and drew her onward in spite of it.

She found Yang and the monsters fighting in what was once the school cafeteria. The shadows looked just like the creatures portrayed in statue form at the front entrance of the school: bipedal wolves and boars with teeth and tusks too large and sharp to be any kind of normal animal. As they fought with Yang they blew away like dust with each killing strike, her friend’s fire breath and talons fierce weapons to dispatch the monsters, but one or two would slash through Yang’s flesh in passing blows. A wolf bit deeply into Yang’s shoulder, and her guardian roared in pain—Blake’s heart felt as if it would tear into pieces.

“Leave Yang alone!” She cried. 

She took a piece of fallen mortar from the floor and chucked it square between the monster’s eyes. It fell off Yang’s back and Yang wasted no time stomping its head against the floor, its flesh dissipating after contact. There was a glance between them.  
“Blake?” It asked, surprised, but before she could answer a boar-like shadow grunted at her from across the room, pawing a cloven hoof against the stone floor. 

She dove for a broken table leg, her fingers curving around the smooth wood as she felt the tremble of the boar charging for her. She turned just in time to crack the animal across its long tusks with her improvised weapon, and she struck it again in the head as hard as she could before it pushed forward and trampled her, its hoofs bruising her thighs. It gored her with its tusks, scoring several gashes into her stomach before its weight lifted from her body. 

“Don’t touch her!” Yang bellowed.

Yang hauled it up by its neck, scissoring its claws through the shadow’s neck and roaring into its face until it evaporated into dust. Yang’s eyes blazed now, cool lavender replaced with the raw red of hot steel, its mane alight with rage. After the monster disintegrated, Yang tore through the rest of the creatures the way a boulder shatters branches underneath it; it ripped through flesh and shadow, ignoring the few new injuries it received, biting and shredding any enemy it could find. Sparing a look around the room once she had her bearings, Blake saw the other animals were gone; either by destruction or retreat, none of them remained. 

Yang scooped her up into its arms. Despite the thrum of adrenaline gushing through her she felt weak, and did not protest the closeness out of pride. Yang carried her to the dormitory, kicking the door open; it laid her out on the makeshift bed, the firelight dim from lack of wood, and after building the flame again Yang unbuttoned Blake’s tattered shirt and its gentle gaze stared at the open wounds there. It stroked a thumb under each gash, swiping away blood.

“Please,” It muttered. “Please be okay.”

“I’m fine,” she said, “It’s not even deep.” But a roll of nausea doubled her over on her side. Yang hissed through its teeth. 

“No,” It said. Blake felt an overwhelming need to vomit. Yang yelled at the ceiling.

_“WEISS!”_

The ball of light was there in barely an instant. 

“The anti-venom, the Dust—where is it?”

It zoomed out of the room and Yang followed, returning a few minutes later with yellowed bandages and a tall graduated cylinder filled with white granules. It poured the contents over Blake’s wounds, and at once the nausea faded, but it burned. It scorched Blake’s insides, and she gritted her teeth, squirming away.

“If you don’t move, it won’t hurt as much!” Yang grunted. Weiss chimed in its ear. “I know, I know.” It replied.

Yang placed gauze over each injury, peeled away a bandage, and stuck it to the spot. 

“There,” it said. “Bleeding’s stopped. Stay still until the pain’s gone.”

“It hurts,” She gasped.

“It’ll pass, I promise. Grimm wounds are poisonous unless you’ve been inoculated. You would’ve died by morning.” 

“Yang,” She groaned. 

It grabbed her hand, and she must’ve passed out for a few minutes, because one moment she was watching Yang’s fingers curl around her own, and the next she awoke and Yang’s eyes were screwed shut, shining tear tracks glistening down its face. It had brought her knuckles to its mouth, the dry rasp of its scales warm over her skin.

“Don’t do that,” It whispered against her hand. “Don’t risk yourself for me.”

When Blake squeezed its fingers, Yang’s eyes snapped open. It brought the back of its hand to its face and scrubbed away the extra moisture as it rose, fetching a cup of water for her to drink. The heat in her stomach had dulled to a low blaze; the water soothed her cotton mouth.

“You saved my life,” She said.

“No.” It replied. “You saved mine.” 

Blake felt tired all at once, her eyelids fluttering. She dozed and woke again some time later, and when she did the scorching, sick feeling had passed. Weiss must’ve returned upstairs, because only the low glow of embers in the fireplace provided any light. Yang shifted, finally pulling away; it must’ve held Blake’s hand this whole time.

“Don’t go,” She said. She reached for it, both of her hands clasping its wrists. The dragon’s gaze flew between their hands and back to Blake’s face, a question’s answer already halfway out of Blake’s mouth.

“I want you to stay,” She said, and blushed.

This was the first of several evenings together. After the first night, Yang tried to return to its spot in the corner, but Blake would not have it. It was so tall it had to tuck its knees up to fit its feet on the cushions all the way, but it felt just as safe having Yang in the bed sleeping with the door locked as it did when the beast stood guard; actually, it felt safer. In the bed Blake could scoot her back into the curve of its abdomen, close to its warmth, and the creature would wrap a burly arm around her stomach in its sleep. The gesture was comforting, and a bit of something else too. Blake learned to treasure those nights, spread out every few days, and the strangeness she felt looking at Yang, the wonder and the something-else, grew with every night. She stopped thinking of the ragged pile of pillows and blankets as her own; it was theirs now.

She was falling in love with Yang. Blake knew that sure as she knew her own name. It was alarming, but…well, she couldn’t rationalize it. She just knew the feeling felt right, and was what she wanted, and to blazes with the rest. Yang valued her, maybe liked her too. At the very least, it cared for her as a companion, and that would be a small pleasure even if it didn’t love her back. At least they could continue being friends. Blake thought again of what Yang looked like before the curse, and how they could break it; could Yang feel the same way, once her sister and friends came back? Or would those feelings fail to bloom, or shrivel and be forgotten, the interim of the curse fade like a bad dream barely remembering upon waking? 

_What if it won’t need me after the curse is broken?_ She thought. _What if Yang can’t love me?_

Her curiosity (and anxiety) came in waves. The only thing she could do was enjoy the moments they had—the afternoons of laughter and the nights when she could sleep with her head on Yang’s broad chest, holding it close until morning—and keep looking for an answer to the curse. And one morning—the morning of the day it all changed—she found it.

 

“I’ve got a plan: you, me, and one full night where no one passes out from exhaustion or has to kill something.”

Blake set the book down. “You have my attention.” She said.

There would be a dinner (provided by Yang toiling away in the kitchen all afternoon) and a special event Yang refused to tell her anything about. It was going to be fancy, or what passed for fancy in this ruined school; Yang had found a massive copper tub and filled it with water, heating it with hot coals until it was warm enough to bathe in, and gave Blake a sliver of old soap it had dug out from some forgotten toiletries set.  


“Are you trying to tell me something?” Blake asked, an eyebrow arched. Yang rubbed its neck.

“I thought you would like a chance to really get clean. I’ve, uh, kind of been making you live in squalor, and I want you to feel completely comfortable. I want you to feel like a princess,” It hesitated, perhaps at its choice of words. “Like the kind you’re always reading about. That’s why—well…”

It produced a simple white dress from behind its back. Blake touched the fabric; it shimmered ever so slightly in the light, but it was soft and cool to the touch, like silk. Yang held it up to her chest and pointed to a broken mirror on Blake’s left.

“It brings out your eyes.” It said.

It was right. The dress, a halter-style, would perfectly accent the gold in her eyes and the black of her hair. She would shine in it tonight, with her skin scrubbed clean and her hair brushed out from the braid she often wore now.

“Where did you find this?” She asked. The dress was in almost perfect condition. The beast cleared its throat.

“…I’d seen it before, so I knew where to look.”

“Am I the only one sprucing up?” It laughed.

“No, I’m your prince for the evening, after all.” It placed a hand on its chest, leaning back into a simple bow. It let out a laugh devoid of its usual confidence. “I know I’m not exactly… But I clean up nice, promise! I have a coat I can borrow from a friend. He was huge before he changed, so it’ll probably fit. It’ll be fun!” 

Yang stepped out and left her alone in the room with the copper tub, so Blake bathed in perfect quiet, thinking. Afterwards she combed out her hair with the silver-backed brush Yang left on a cushion by the door, and read while the air wicked away moisture from her skin. This particular book had been buried in a corner of the library, high on a shelf, squashed behind several books on architecture—Blake thought it odd a book on alchemy would be so out of place, and thought it would be worth checking.

By the time her hair was dry, the book had revealed a solution for the curse: in cases of transfiguration, all it would take to change back was for the subject in question to be bathed in Dust, and for a powerful source of energy to be applied in the right manner. The Dust had to be a certain kind; the diagram showed the quality and color of the granules, and the weights and specifications, and she recognized them. Professor Port had small samples of all kinds of Dust in his laboratory, and knew where to get more. It was a simple solution; Blake had no doubt if the book had not been stored in the wrong section and hidden behind those volumes, Yang could’ve figured it out long ago.

She had done it. She knew how to break the spell.

Yang would be overjoyed. They could travel home to the professor and arrange enough Dust to return its sister and its friends to their original state (because she knew Yang would wait until the people it loved were fixed first), and Yang would return to its human form and get on with its life.

Blake wondered if that life included her now. She set the book down, and ran the brush through her hair again.

 _I’ll tell it about the cure tonight,_ she thought. _After I tell it how I feel._

She wanted that much for herself, as selfish as it was—for all she knew, Yang wouldn’t remember any of this. It wouldn’t remember her. The afternoon hours passed; Blake wrote down the important information from the book, folding the note into a square and securing it in the pocket of her messenger bag hanging on a hook in her room, and checked on Yang in the kitchen to see if it needed help.

“No peeking!” It shouted, and waved her away.

Blake groomed Phillippe in the courtyard (he was happy to be walked, eager for the bristles of the brush) and washed her hands clean in one of the buckets by the well. As the light dimmed and shifted towards twilight, she put on the white dress and a pair of soft black shoes and met Yang in what had once been the grand training room. 

She couldn’t believe how clean it was: the stones had been swept and mopped until they were free of all dirt down to the thinnest crack, and the wall of arched windows on the west side of the room had been washed as some point. An enormous fire burned in the fireplace at the edge of the makeshift dance floor, but it was not the only illumination. Blake had gathered torches and candles to help her with reading at night, and all of those tools had now been coopted by Yang to encircle the room, but what really struck her as beautiful were the lights above. High in the domed ceiling, an enormous cluster of lights bobbled along, some multicolored, some gray and white and golden, all sending down soft beams to where she stood. She felt Yang’s strong hand at her waist.

“Do you like them?” It asked. “They wanted to help.”

“They’re beautiful.” She said. 

She looked over. Yang was elegantly dressed in a beautiful charcoal jacket, an ivory cravat wound around its neck. It had brushed its brass mane into a low, loose ponytail, and though the beast had found no boots that would fit its claws, it had managed to slip into a pair of black trousers, the complete picture of a prince. Or a perfect lady, whichever it was. It grinned at her, tapping a claw to its lapel.

“Based on that face, I’m guessing you like it.”

“Mhmm,” Blake murmured, slipping her arm into the crook of its elbow. “You look quite dashing.”

It sent a thumbs-up towards an olive-green light hovering about the ceiling. “Thanks, Yatsu,” Yang said, then glanced to her. “Shall we?”

Towards the end of their meal, Yang set up a cloth-covered bundle on the edge of the table, and revealed an old phonograph, its silver horn huge and gleaming in the candlelight. Yang wound the device with the crank peeking from one side, and music began to play, soft music with piano and strings. Blake rose to her feet, offering the beast her hand.

“Would you care to dance?”

“I…” Yang shifted, nervous. “I don’t think you want me to step on your toes.”

“You won’t,” She said, tugging it out of its seat.

Port had taught Blake how to dance when she was small. He had placed her tiny feet on his leather shoes, and swayed and spun her to the tune of many waltzes—Yang was less sure of itself, especially when Blake placed one of its hands on her side and took its other claw in her grasp—but after a few missed steps they fell into the right rhythm. They danced all around the room for a good while; much later the gramophone wound down and Yang reset it a second, a third, a fourth time, confident in their movements now as a pair. 

During a song much slower than the others, Blake pressed her cheek to her partner’s chest. It thumped quickly in her ear; even through the white cotton shirt she could see golden light radiating from its heart, brighter than ever before. Hesitantly, Yang abandoned the frame of their dance, its arms enveloping her in an embrace unlike any they had shared before. This was not the tucked-in safety of Yang’s hug as she slept, nor the arm around her shoulder to encourage her after a long day’s work. Yang’s hands smoothed over her dress, as if they agonized over which spot to hold, as if they wished to be everywhere at once. Blake couldn’t stand it.

“Sit with me,” She murmured.

They sat in front of the fireplace, Blake’s head in the beast’s lap, her tresses scattered and curled by her face. This was a normal occurrence for them before sleeping now—they would talk while Yang fed the blaze, and Blake would let it carry her into bed afterwards. Yang looked down at her, brushing bangs away from her forehead.

“Blake?”

“Yes?”

“Are you…happy…here with me?”

“Yes,” She said, threading her fingers into the lapel of its jacket. “I’m very happy.”

It smiled, partially relieved, but concern still laced its gaze. She touched its face, stroked the fine bronze scales there, letting her fingers linger on its cheek.

“What’s wrong, Yang?”

“I…it’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“…When we break the curse, I’m worried you’ll be disappointed.” Its brows furrowed, and its eyes shone in the firelight. “I’m just a normal person, like you. I’m not a prince like in your stories, Blake—I’m not like the man you should have.”

“Why does it have to be a man?”

There was a long silence. A flicker of hesitation crossed Yang’s features. It opened its mouth, but no words came out, and its lips closed again.

“Were you a girl?” Blake finally asked.

“…Would it bother you if I was?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. I like you either way.” She ran a hand down her stomach, wishing Yang’s hand was there instead. “This dress was yours once, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Yang nodded. “It was. Looks better on you, I think.”

“I can’t even imagine how gorgeous you must’ve been.”

“I—uh, well—I think you’re way prettier in it than I ever was.” It (no, she) shifted her legs under Blake’s head. Blake saw the bob of her throat as she swallowed. “You’re beautiful, and I’m…well… look at me.”

“I am,” Blake said, very gently. 

She lifted her head from Yang’s lap and sat up enough to shift closer to her companion. The room seemed quiet at once. She touched her fingers to the glow in Yang’s chest, watching it swell and brighten underneath the shirt. Blake felt as if a clean space had been evacuated within herself over the last few days—the old, dark sludge of harder times had fled, and in its place was a softness, a tenderness that warmed her face and spiraled out of her eyes in long glances, like the one she shared with Yang now as the dragon ( _girl_ ) watched her every move. Yang was still, a sigh escaping as she relaxed under Blake’s touch. 

Blake wanted to explore now. Her touches did not demand more than Yang was willing to give; she traced her hands feather-light upwards over the curves and ridges of her friend’s chest, her shoulders, her face, pausing here and there in case Yang wanted her to stop, but she found no such signal. It was only by touching her did Blake realize how hungry she was for the sensation; she clearly recognized the tug in her chest she had felt that first night. It was the desire to be closer, to touch and understand and know the woman in front of her, every inch of flesh and every line of thought. Her hands found their way to Yang’s face.

“You’re lovely,” Blake said. “No story could match you, human or otherwise.”

One of Yang’s hands found her shoulder blade as she leaned closer; those claws could shred the neckline of the dress in an instant. Blake thought of all the old myths from her books—Europa and the white bull, Leda and her swan—and wondered how one could learn to love a beast. But Yang wasn’t a beast, was she? She was a woman, a human hidden, waiting. Blake’s lips drifted to the copper sheen of Yang’s cheek; she took in a heavy breath, and Yang breathed out, and they shared it as they shared a pair of hearts, each beating to the same time.

“Blake,” Yang sighed, low and soft; she said it like a prayer. Her other hand drifted to the soft underside of Blake’s thigh.

She had half a mind to disrobe right there, to pull away her dress and let Yang be her first lover, to find out exactly how their strange bodies could fit together; instead, her lips traveled to Yang’s forehead, pressing a kiss there, chaste for now. She wondered if Yang’s heart throbbed like hers. Her skin felt like vibrating. Her fingers raked through the thick gold of Yang’s hair, and her palms slid around the base of each smooth horn, grasping both in a firm squeeze. Yang’s hand on her thigh traveled higher, the edge of the dress rippling away from her skin until it nearly laid her entire leg bare, the flesh open and vulnerable. 

Reflecting on it afterwards, she knew Yang hadn’t meant to hurt her. When Blake finally kissed her on the mouth (well, what she thought she could kiss on those draconic features) the act pulled a deep, pleasured shudder and groan from Yang’s frame, and she clenched down without thinking; her talons only just broke the skin before Yang realized what she had done. Blake’s gasp had given her all the warning she needed. She released her hold, as though touching Blake’s flesh had burned her.

“I—I’m so sorry!” She stammered.

She reached up and removed Blake’s hands for her horns, fretting over the small cuts turning into fine crimson lines as she watched. She pulled the ivory handkerchief from her jacket’s breast pocket, pressing it to the wound.

“I’ll be fine,” Blake said. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is my fault,” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have…It shouldn’t have been like this. If I had my human body—”

“It doesn’t bother me, Yang.” After Blake put a hand over the handkerchief, Yang pulled away. She stood. Her voice was rough.

“I want to love you the way you deserve to be loved, Blake. Properly. I want to touch you, and kiss you. I…” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I want to be normal.”

This was the moment. Blake had to tell her.

“Yang.” She steadied herself. “I found the cure.”

Silence. Yang’s mouth dropped open, wordless.

“What?” She asked.

“I know how to reverse the spell. I wanted to surprise you.”

The latter half of the evening whipped into a blur after that; they split from each other and kept that way, no touch closer than a hand on an elbow or shoulder. There was little time to think. Yang was full of questions, and after Blake explained the rough idea of the process the night was a flurry of packing and planning, of deciding the best, quickest path back to her home in the village; there was no more time for thinking or for caresses, at least not yet. As Yang stuffed little apples and nuts into a sack for her, as Blake slipped out of the silk dress and returned to rough woolen pants and a moth-eaten jacket, she kept her hopes close. The cure would work. It had to. When they finished their preparations and slept for an hour or two, the sun was rising again, and they left Beacon to the wind and cold sunshine.


	3. Chapter 3

Philippe gave his all, trotting for as long as Blake dared to push him, sweat rising through his hide like beads of perspiration on a cold glass in summer. She broke his stride to allow him to walk every so often, and Yang needed a break too from following in the brush alongside them. They would make good time. The village was about seventy miles or so from Beacon on the main road, and even with the mud from the melting snow making the path hazardous and sloppy, they would be there before twilight. As they stopped to rest for an hour in the late morning, Yang sat on a rotting stump, her hair dulled with sweat, her paws covered with mud and errant leaves stuck to it. As she cleaned the debris away, Blake walked over and stood in front of her. Yang looked up.

“Only a few more hours now. Everyone at Beacon will be well again soon.” Blake said. Yang nodded, but lowered her gaze, worry settling over her brow. Blake kissed between her horns.

“You’ll always be enough for me, Yang.” She added, quietly. 

They arrived earlier than she thought they would. It was late afternoon when they left the main road and took the path up the hill to the professor’s little cottage with its thatched roof, the bushes of winter jasmine and splotches of hellebore in the meadows all around the house bright against the yellowed grass slicked flat by snowmelt. Blake instructed Yang to keep outside for a moment (she didn’t want Port to whip out his musket at the sight of her) and opened the door.

“Papa?” She called.

Instantly she felt a chill shoot down her spine. Broken glass was everywhere, Port’s wine bottles and display cases upturned and shattered. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, torn diagrams and lost book pages, candles broken in half and sacks of food from the kitchen spilt everywhere, flour and yeast dusting over floorboards and furniture alike.

“Yang!” She shouted. 

She turned, and Yang was there, coiled for trouble. The two of them looked through the rest of the house and found the same destruction wherever they looked. Only the professor’s lab remained safe, the iron door bolted fast at the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement. Blake knocked, and the professor opened it, pulling her into an embrace as soon as he laid eyes on her.

“Thank goodness,” He said. “I prepared for a rescue two weeks ago, but my captivity in the wild left me vulnerable to a rather severe fever. I was recovering for some time. I wasn’t sure if you were alright.”

“I am,” She breathed. “Better than alright. But what about you? What happened?”

He glanced over her shoulder, alarmed at Yang standing a few steps up. Blake put her hands on his shoulders.

“It’s alright, Papa.” She said. “We’re here to help.”

“Who would’ve done this?” Yang asked. Port’s eyebrows shot up.

“It was the Taurus boy!” He exclaimed. “Your friend, Adam! He came looking for you a few nights ago—there were others with him, Faunus I hadn’t seen before—and when I told them you were missing in the woods they struck me and tore the cottage apart. I’ve slept in here ever since. They’ve been by every other day, waiting for you. I imagine they’ll be here again come nightfall.”

That was when the bruises on his face registered at last. They were faded, greenish-yellow, but there all the same. A hot swirl of anger rippled in Blake’s stomach. The few weeks she’d been away had felt like an escape; she hadn’t planned on running, but her detour with Yang had served as a hideaway from her demons nonetheless. When was she going to stop running and _do_ something?

“Adam’s no friend of mine,” She spat. “And this stops now.” She took the paper with the cure written on it out of her bag, pressing it into Port’s palm. “Help Yang with this. I’ve got to find Adam.”

She went up the stairs and into her room. She opened her wardrobe, digging out a chest from the bottom she thought she would never have occasion to use. Port had recovered it when she was thirteen or so, after searching for it for some time, and it was the only set of items she had of her father’s. She opened the lid and stared.

The sword was named Gambol Shroud, but there was nothing playful about it. The blade was char black, the handle wrapped in gray snakeskin. She had often watched her father maintaining it when he came home from his foreign wars, buffing away nicks and oiling it to keep rust away. When he died of cholera, it was with the things the collectors took when they raided her old home; until Port had bought it from an unscrupulous dealer, she had never thought she would see the blade again. At times she took it out, swung it around to feel the heft and ease of which it moved, but she had never taken it to anything other than the air.

She strung a baldric along the sheath and set the weapon aside. The other piece was a leather breastplate, toughened by boiling. She shrugged it over her head, and right away she knew it was too big for her. The armholes were too restricting despite their size, and her shoulders had no room to move because the plate rode too high against her neck, choking her. So much for that. She shimmied out of it, leaving it on her bed, and slung the baldric holding Gambol Shroud over her shoulder.

“Is that for intimidation?” Yang asked from the doorway.

“Hopefully yes, and if I’m lucky, nothing else.”

“It suits you.”

“I’m not a warrior.” Yang shrugged.

“Could’ve fooled me back at Beacon.” She stretched her arms across the doorway, barely fitting her massive frame under it. Blake moved close, but Yang wouldn’t budge.

“I’m not changing back until I’m sure you’re safe.” She said.

“If those people see you they’ll strike first and ask questions later. Adam was angry with me the last time we met, and I don’t think they would mind torching both of us alive at this point.”

“I’m a dragon,” She huffed. “I burn. I’m not the one burning. And I won’t let anything happen to you.” 

At times, there was no reasoning with people, was there?

“Promise me you’ll stay out of sight.” Blake said. “Please.”

Yang agreed, though not without further reservation; she stopped resisting as vehemently after Blake pulled her into a firm embrace, telling her it would be alright. As twilight fell, Blake showed her a spot up high in a beech tree near the cottage where Yang could watch and intervene, if necessary. Then, Blake sat on the steps of her porch and waited for Adam and his men to arrive.

It was strange to think that a few weeks ago, Adam had only been a young man with anger issues and a cruel (perhaps even psychotic) streak. Blake thought of the last time she had sat where she was now, of Adam’s hand clutching at her chest, his lips on her ear, his hand across her face, and shuddered. Even though they were close once, she couldn’t imagine being his lover. He was harsh and violent, perhaps even evil, and putting this matter to rest had been a long time coming. He had not been her prince-in-rags for a long time. Perhaps he never had been.

When the raiding group came, they looked stronger than she had expected. Adam was at the front, his sword clenched in one fist. At his side was an enormous man easily Yang’s height, a black tribal tattoo curling around one rigid bicep, and a blade as broad as his thigh perched on his shoulder. Other men were there too, Faunus of several species, armed with knives or staves, hard in the eyes. A few of them carried torches, one or two a mirrored lantern. Blake wondered if they were from the city—she had never seen them in the village, and Adam had spoken of recruiting and traveling before. The crowd stopped when Adam put up a hand, silent and waiting for instructions. Adam passed his sword to his lieutenant. He walked forward alone, about ten feet in front of her. He spat into the dust.

“Where’ve you been?” He asked. He was already angry; a vein stood out on his forehead.

She stood. Her left hand curled around Gambol Shroud’s pommel.

“None of your business, Adam. What do you want?”

“I want you.” He said. “I want to start the revolution we’ve talked about for so long, and I want you to come with me.”

“You call beating an old man senseless a revolution?” Her lip curled. 

“Port is as culpable as anyone. Did he ever protect you from the other children, Blake? Did he ever fight for you? Your honor?”

“He never hurt anyone and claimed that it was justice.”

“What do you know of justice!?” He shouted. In a flash he was in front of her. She pulled at Gambol Shroud but he snatched both of her hands; he twisted the wrist of her sword arm hard to the left, and she cried out.

Her first thought was of Yang. She looked over Adam’s shoulder up to the creature’s hiding place in the branches—she saw twin points of crimson flaring from the shadows. _Please, please don’t rescue me,_ She thought. _I can handle this. Please._

“There can be no justice for their kind.” Adam said. “Humans aren’t capable of anything other than greed and hatred. They would violate you for the sake of their own lust. How many times did I have to pull Cardin Winchester off of you!?” He shook her. “How many times did I take a punch for you?!”

“And how many times did you throw a punch first?” She gasped. “They’re not all like that. You can’t judge an entire race based on a few cruel boys, Adam! How does fighting make you any different than them?”

“I’m different because I love you.” He said, savagely. “I would burn down every house in this village for the way they’ve treated you.” He looked over his shoulder, nodding to his men.

“And I will. Starting with this one.”

Blake thrust her knee into his groin, doubling him over. She shoved him away, sending him careening into the dirt, and pulled Gambol Shroud from its sheathe. 

“You don’t know what love is!” She shouted.

“And you do?”

“Yes! I know what it’s like to love someone more than you love yourself; I know what it’s like to want to protect them, even if you don’t have the strength!” 

She thought of the Grimm at Beacon, of the shadow gorging her stomach. 

“I know what it’s like to love someone without knowing if they’ll love you back!” She said. She thought of Yang’s warm hands, the ballroom with its floating lights. 

“You may have fought humans, Adam, but don’t pretend it was ever because you loved me. You fought because of your own rage.”

He leapt to his feet; the lieutenant offered him his sword, and he tore it from its scabbard. He slapped the side of his blade against Gambol Shroud, the vibration of the impact ringing Blake’s bones all the way up to her elbow. She brought her weapon back to point. He paced in a semicircle around her.

“Where have you been?” He asked, low and dangerous. “Who is this person you’ve fallen for while you were away, Blake? Is he a human? Have you fallen in love with a monster?!” He rang his sword against hers again. “Answer me!”

“I don’t owe you a goddam thing,” She snarled. Courage welled in her stomach. “And she’s more of a hero than you will ever be. Yang’s not a monster, Adam: you are!”

As Adam lunged, his blade thrusting right for her shoulder, two things happened next before Blake had time to respond. The first was that Port kicked open the front door of the house and began shooting his musket into the enemy crowd gathered nearby. A few musket balls struck knees and thighs and biceps, dropping the victims into groaning messes and sending a few others ducking for cover. 

The second was that a burst of fire streamed down from the limb Yang crouched on above, torching a number of the Faunus instantly. Only the barest tip of Adam’s sword entered her shoulder before he withdrew the shallow strike and repositioned himself, diving behind another tree’s thick trunk to avoid the crossfire. Blake too hit the ground, covering her head as Port fired shot after shot over her.

As Port stopped to reload, Yang leapt from the tree to the earth. The remaining Faunus recoiled at the sight of Yang in the torchlight; Blake remembered her own terror at their first meeting, although that seemed like a lifetime ago. Yang towered over the men, her claws sharp, her teeth bared. She swiped at a few of them, letting them escape her talons by only the barest of distances. Her ember of a heart glowed brightly, though Blake knew she would not have another fire breath that large ready again so soon. 

“Leave now, and I won’t follow you!” Yang roared in her deepest voice. “Stay, and I’ll kill you all! Run! Run away and never return!”

Only the big Faunus stayed. He faced off with Yang, ducking in and out of her reach, until Port fired another shot or two into the air, and then he backed away.

“Commander!” He called. “Adam!” There was no answer. Unsure of what to do, after a moment the lieutenant backed away, running down the path into the woods.

“Be careful, he might still be here somewhere.” Yang said. Blake rose to her feet, then ran and threw her arms around Yang’s neck. 

“Wait,” Yang murmured into her temple. “Wait, we have to make sure he’s gone.” They broke apart. Yang kissed her forehead, then waved to Port.

“Do you have a lantern?” She called. Port ducked inside, returning a moment later.

“Here,” He said. Yang jogged over, and after a moment’s fumbling focused the lantern’s mirrored insides so a bright beam of light arced from its porthole. Blake turned to look at the beam. Yang saw something in the darkness.

“Behind you!” She yelled.

“If I can’t have you, then neither will your beast.” Adam growled over her shoulder, and charged.

His sword never made contact. Blake didn’t know how Yang moved as quickly as she did, because the distance should’ve been too great, but when Adam drove his blade towards her chest Yang swatted it to the side, then clamped down on the steel with both hands. Her eyes were still red, her golden mane glowing with light.

“No,” She said. 

The edge of the sword sliced into the flesh of her palms. Blood unlike any Blake had seen before dripped down the blade like liquid brass.

“You’re never going to hurt her ever again. Or anyone for that matter.” Yang added, and bent the sword like a piece of wire, curling it over like a nautilus’s shell. 

Adam stared at her, dumfounded, for about two seconds before Yang punched him in the face. It was a good hit, square in his nose, and he collapsed to the grass right after. When Port tossed her rope from the porch, Yang bound Adam’s wrists and ankles together and threw his ruined sword into the field. She wiped her hands on her cloak. The brass shine faded into bright scarlet on the fabric.

“Yang, you’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, I guess so, huh?”

“We should get a bandage on that.”

“Here!” Port called from the house. “It’s about time we try that Dust concoction!”

When they stepped onto the porch the professor brought out vials and bottles filled with different quantities of Dust; various densities, granule sizes, and crystal qualities were dumped over Yang’s head, forming a rainbow of color as it seeded through her hair and stuck to her scales. Port shook out the last few bits, then set the bottles aside.

“The formula Blake found reverses profound physiological changes through the chemical processes of Dust reactions,” Port explained. “With the level of energy released, there’s a chance those reactions might seal your injury as they modulate your body, or at least give me time for me to run into the village to wake the town healer.”

“It’s worth a shot, right?” Yang said. He nodded.

“Indeed. You’ll need an energy source—perhaps another flame breath?”

“Sure. It won’t be long until I have another ready.”

“Excellent. Take care until I return.”

Port ran down the path, quick for such an old man. As Yang rested, Blake stared at her and the gashes in her hands, how tired she suddenly looked; the day had been strenuous for both of them, but only Yang would have this final journey. She wrapped her arms around Yang’s broad shoulders.

“What should I do if you don’t remember me?” She asked. Yang nuzzled her cheek.

“Find a way to remind me. I believe in you.” 

Somehow Yang could always find a little bit of hope. 

“I love you,” Blake said. 

“I know.” Yang smiled. “Ready?” 

When Yang released her flame, it was a slow burn. It spilled out of her mouth and fell down her chest, wreathing around her feet as the Dust began to catch fire. In an instant the fire leapt up, surrounding her in the blaze, and multicolored sparks snapped in the air like tiny fireworks. As the intensity of the heat grew, it blinded Blake; bright white pops of light made her wince, but she could catch changes happening to Yang in between the brilliant lightshow. 

Yang had lost a third of her height; she was only a bit taller than Blake now, and the cloak she wore burned away. The talons shrank inwards, disappearing into fingernails; the vicious underbite morphed and took the shape of a human jaw again, the fangs vanishing between lips; her large horns fell away from her skull, disintegrating into sparks, and the crazy shock of hair between them lost its rough, wild texture, softening into gentle blonde curls and cowlicks. When Yang’s scales began to lose their sheen and the once-sexless chest began to shift and fill, the ember of her heart became so bright Blake had to shield her eyes. When she opened them again, all evidence of Yang’s draconic form had gone.

Instead, a woman her own age stood there. Yang stared back; only the eyes were the same from the beast Blake had known and the girl in front of her—gentle eyes bright with intelligence. All the rough edges of the beast were gone—the rest of her human form was as fresh and clean as the rose-tinged skin Blake saw now, supple and smooth-looking and—

 _Oh,_ Blake thought. _She’s beautiful._

And naked. Quite naked. Yang blinked, and looked down at herself, amazed, not only at her restored body, but at her hands, whole and free of the gashes from Adam’s sword. If Blake had thought Yang was beautiful as an inhuman creature, well…it was only truer now; firm muscles stood in contrast to the softer parts of her, parts that made Blake blush from her neck all the way to the tips of her ears, and her skin looked warm and perfect. She was more beautiful than Blake could’ve ever possibly guessed, and she didn’t know where to look at the moment. She shrugged off her coat and held it to Yang’s shoulders.

“Here,” She said, and paused. “Do…do you know who I am?”

Yang took the coat from her and, after a moment of thought, let it slide through her fingers to the ground. She stepped onto it, and Blake had to try not to move away or let her eyes wander. The last part was not difficult; Yang’s gaze was just as intense now as it was when she was a beast, but there was a new urgency to it. Yang closed the distance between them, wrapping Blake in the scent of hot embers and sea water and burned driftwood, heat radiating off her skin even hotter than when she had scales, her strong hands clasping Blake around the shoulders, her eyes burning a line straight to Blake’s heart.

“You’re the woman I love,” Yang said, and kissed her.

It was not an event Blake could hope to be prepared for. In the ballroom the night before, she had entertained the thought of sharing her body with Yang even though she was a beast, and now Blake could not imagine any other option. As Yang kissed her, and her bare breasts pressed against Blake’s clothes, Blake could not imagine any other ending than the one she imagined now: the two of them tangled together in a bed somewhere, perhaps her own or the one they shared at Beacon, making love to the point that they could not remember anything that came before or after. That fantasy was a certainty now, just as sure as the soaring joy in her chest as Yang whispered her name after their last kiss.

“Blake,” She grinned, eyes bright and shining with tears. “You saved me.”

A week later, old curtains were flung aside and bright sunlight flooded through the window of her new bedroom at Beacon. Blake squeezed her eyes shut, groaning at the intrusion. Yang kissed her temple. 

“Wake up, kitten. You promised you’d help Port organize the lab today.”

She groaned again, sounding more agonized than the first, but opened her eyes. Yang had changed into gardening clothes, a wide-brimmed hat in one hand. Blake sat up, yawning.

“Tell me again why the first time wasn’t enough?”

“Because Weiss said you organized the Dust vials weird. I told you to get her to help the first time around. She knows more about it than your old man.”

“I know, I know.”

Yang scratched behind Blake’s ear, eliciting a small purr.

“I’ll come by to help after Ruby and I finish pulling up the turnips. I’ll need you to spot me when I clear some rubble today anyway.”

“But Yang, if I’m around you’ll get weak in the knees,” She teased. Yang kissed her, sending a warm shiver down her spine. She still wasn’t used to that. Yang winked.

“You know it.”

After Blake pulled on a pair of trousers and one of Yang’s shirts, they walked through Beacon’s halls, the broken glass and dust swept away days ago by the newly-transformed student body. Sunlight streamed through the open spaces, and everywhere there was the sound of laughter, of hammers and saws and pulleys repairing the school minute-by-minute. Ruby was waiting for Yang at the end of the hall, fidgeting with a random piece of ancient machinery. Blake liked Yang’s little sister quite a bit—she understood why Yang would fight so hard for her. 

“Hiya, Blake!” Ruby smiled. “I finished the book I borrowed. Want me to drop it off later?” 

“If you have time.” Ruby nodded. Yang turned to Blake and pecked her cheek. 

“See you soon,” She said.

“See you soon.” 

As she watched Yang’s retreating back, her face split into a wide grin from something Ruby said, Blake felt a peace she thought she would never completely have again. She was free of small-minded villagers and Adam. Her adopted father supported her decision to live at Beacon and was even helping with the renovation, and she had new friends, the first friends she had since meeting Adam so long ago. And she had Yang, who was as tender, sweet, and passionate as she could’ve wished in a lover. She was Blake’s one and only. Her true love. Blake smiled to herself, and ran down the halls of her new home. 

This was not the end of her story, but the beginning.


End file.
